He waited--and still neither the one nor the other uttered a word.

It was more than he could endure.

He addressed himself to Sydney first.
"Try to thank Mrs.Linley," he said.
She answered faintly: "I can't speak!" He appealed to his wife next.

"Say a last kind word to her," he pleaded.
She made an effort, a vain effort to obey him.

A gesture of despair answered for her as Sydney had answered: "I can't speak!" True, nobly true, to the Christian virtue that repents, to the Christian virtue that forgives, those three persons stood together on the brink of separation, and forced their frail humanity to suffer and submit.
In mercy to the woman, Linley summoned the courage to part them.